Left Unity.org / People’s Assembly

[Young Master Smeet]

I'm not sure that's true, on a basic empirical level, several hundred thousand at least vote left in election, dwarfing those who engaged in Occupy.  I'm not so sure that Occupy eshewed demands, as such, although there was no platform, central demand, it was rife with people who had money crankery up their sleeve.

[ALB]

jpodcaster wrote:

Is the Left Party Platform perfect? No, of course not – I would personally like to see a more strongly worded anti-capitalist thread running through it and a stronger committment to deepen and extend 'the commons' in all its forms. But at the moment I think its the best of the three platforms in terms of the future of Left Unity as an organisation that is likely to make a real difference on the political stage.

I agree that there is a space in Britain for a vaguely anti-capitalist left of Labour party. This exists in all the other countries of Western Europe and also in Australia and New Zealand, but there are major obstacles to it getting off the ground here:1. The first-past-the-post election system. To be credible as a party "likely to make a real difference on the political stage", the Left Party will need to have elected councillors if not an MP. But the election system in Britain makes this very difficult (such parties have been able to make some headway in other countries because there's proportional representation there).2. The existence of a left-leaning Green Party which espouses most of ideas favoured by those behind the Left Party platform. The Left Party would have to squeeze out the Green Party; which seems unlikely. I can't see it appealing to many beyond ex-members of the SWP, WRP, Militant and other lesser Trotskyist groups, the old Communist Party, Respect (and the odd ex-member of our party). As typified by the officers of the already-registered "Left Party": Kate Hudson (ex-CP, ex-Respect) and Andrew Bourgin (ex-WRP, ex-Respect).3. The "squabbling Trotskyist sects". This is what prevented the SLP and then Respect from filing this niche and was only resolved by the actions of an authoritarian Leader but (to its credit) the Left Party wants to be an open, democratic party. The Trotskyists are and will remain in it. They will present a problem.In any event, if the Left Party does manage to get off the ground on the basis of the "Left Party Platform" and sustain, say, 5% of the vote, so what? As the famous "Socialist Platform" puts it, "capitalism does not and cannot be made to work in the interest of the majority."

jpodcaster wrote:

I guess we'll see what happens?

Yes, we will.

[stuartw2112]

The Nostradamus method is very simple and can give the illusion of scientific prediction. All you do is say that something will happen in the future, but without giving specifics or a timeframe."Left Unity will be a failure. Occupy was a dismal failure.""OK, when, and by what standards, and compared with who or what?""Eventually, and when compared with our strategy, which is to get everyone to agree with us, and establish a future imaginary utopia where everything is totally lovely and works perfectly.""Right, wow, that's fantastic. Do you people by any chance have a paper I could buy?"

[ALB]

stuartw2112 wrote:

"OK, when, and by what standards, and compared with who or what?"

Ok then, what are the standards by which you will judge the success or otherwise of the new Left Party?

[Young Master Smeet]

The nostradamus method appears to be better than the poor argumentation method.

Quote:

Sid the Socialist: Building that house without cement will be a failure.Ollie the Occupier: OK, when, and by what standards, and compared with who or what?Sid the Socialist: Eventually, and when compared with our strategy, which is to get everyone to use cement.

It is perfectly reasonable to argue that the methods being employed cannot achieve the ends desired, and to argue for the use of workable means.  Given we've gathered together to advocate those means, it'd be odd if our approach to others with the same ends was not to argue for our means.

[stuartw2112]

ALB: No scientific standards, if that's what you mean. I'll just carry on judging it as I have been judging it. Are we open and democratic? Are we helping people who need help? Are we including them in our organisation and decision-making? Are we making steps forward in our own education, understanding, actions? Are we moving in a direction which, if we keep going, will end up democratising society, ending oppression or injustices, democratise or otherwise hold to account social institutions, change our behavior and ideas for the better? Etc, etc.YMS: I've got nothing against you approaching the Socialist Platform if you want to. I was just drawing attention to the similarity between your own "means" and those you're wont to sneer at. It's no surprise to me that SPGBers would read the "Socialist Platform", note the similarity in words, and then turn up armed to the teeth with leaflets. It's just amusing to me that everyone's "means" and methods and actions are fair game for the most condescending sneering apart from your own, which is apparently a model of righteousness. Except, as I pointed out, they are in this case indistinguishable.Anyway, the methods you are right to rejct but both wrongly assume are at full play in Left Unity – those of the old SWP – have been overwhelmingly rejected, I'd say unaminously rejected, even by those who are (if you insist) "Trotskyists", even by those who were, until recently, SWP members. Some things, believe it or not, really do change.

[ALB]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

LU have invited people to have their say at the founding conference on the 30th Nov where you require to register and be a founding member of Left Unity. Will the EC if prepared to issue an open letter to LU also be asked to authorise a member or members to attend and make known the party view. I am assuming since the party is not yet a formal political party an SPGB member can join it to make a contribution…then once it is formally declared a political party rather than an exploratory collection of individuals and existing parties at the conference, be the first to resignI would suggest that it is an opportunity to address an audience on our socialist principles and our own democratic structure but hopefully not with a long harangue. 

We can't do that, if only because Stuart would sneer at us even more!Actually, we probably won't need to as, if they are logical, the supporters of the "Socialist Platform" will be putting a similar argument. Here's one of the signatories, Nick Wrack:

Quote:

Solidarity: Many people make that vagueness a virtue. They argue that it will help to garner wide electoral support from everyone to the left of the Labour Party, and that the Socialist Platform would narrow it down.NW: Our aim should be to make socialist ideas popular, not to become popular by hiding them. The view that’s shared by the platform signatories is that popularity based on appearing as all things to all people is not worth having. You’re building on sand.I believe that socialist ideas, explained patiently, are inspirational, and the socialist left has forgotten how to inspire people. One of the consequences of socialist ideas being in retreat in society is that even a section of the socialists themselves have become reluctant to argue openly for socialist ideas and socialist change. They think that, if you water your ideas down, you might get electoral support.We’d prefer to play a longer game. This is not an overnight get-rich-quick exercise. We want to take socialist ideas into working-class communities and give them roots so they last. We don’t want an ephemeral, here-today-gone-tomorrow success.

And from 6 others (7 including Wrack):

Quote:

Any government that aims to manage capitalism, rather than dismantling it and restructuring society with production for need, not profit, will inevitably be forced by the logic of the market and the workings of the system to act in the interests of the capitalist class. If a government wants capitalism to work better, it will be forced by the economic basis of the system to do whatever is necessary to make it work better. That means implementing policies that promote investment and maximising profits: in other words, low taxes, minimum regulation, low wages, privatisation and so on. This is the reason that the social democratic parties across the world, like the Labour Party, Pasok in Greece or PSOE in Spain, support austerity policies. Because they cannot contemplate a break with capitalism, they are compelled to act in its interests.Capitalism cannot be made to work in the interests of the majority. That is not how it functions. Big business will always find ways to flout or ignore regulation. Even if regulation succeeds, which it never can fully, the basic exploitative relationship between capital and labour remains – the capitalist makes his/her profit out of the unpaid labour of the workers s/he employs.

Mind you, we probably would have to there to draw the conclusion from:

Quote:

Capitalism cannot be made to work in the interests of the majority.

that, then why try to make it work that way? Why campaign to get the government to do this?Actually, the debate on 30 November promises to be fascinating (even if the result is a foregone conclusion: victory for the opportunists). I'm going to try to be there.

[jondwhite]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

I'm not sure that's true, on a basic empirical level, several hundred thousand at least vote left in election, dwarfing those who engaged in Occupy.  I'm not so sure that Occupy eshewed demands, as such, although there was no platform, central demand, it was rife with people who had money crankery up their sleeve.

I think you're using left in a sense of self-identified lefties who eschew revolution, strange in a topic about the Left Unity project. In the rhetorically "revolutionary" mileu, Occupy has done pretty well, in terms of breadth and depth of support, especially contrasted to non-"revolutionary" lefties, Labour etc.. Occupy Wall Street was also much better at this than Occupy London.

[stuartw2112]

We issued an appeal for a broad party of the left, signed up 10,000 people to it, and are now trying to establish a broad party of the left, because that's what we're openly in favour of. We're also openly in favour of socialism (see Left Party Platform statements). Don't see what's opportunistic about that. Sending a letter to the Socialist Platform, on the other hand, proposing a link up, even though secretly (not put in the letter, though not that secretly if you're going to be daft enough to admit to it on a public forum) you have no hope for it at all and disparage everyone involved in it, but think what the hell, we might make a point and pick up some members. Who're the opportunists, again, I'm confused?

[stuartw2112]

Jon is absolutely right. Pretty much everyone everywhere around the whole world has heard of "Occupy", and have at least some vague idea of what they were about. Absolutely no one anywhere has heard of the SPGB or its companion parties. So, on a rough back of the cigarette pack calculation, I'd suggest that SPGBers might want to be a little bit cautious about just who should be judged a "dismal failure".

[ALB]

Someone has just drawn attention on our other forum to this letter that appeared in the Guardian a week or so ago (I'm neither a Guardian reader nor a Guardian-reader):http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/aug/12/left-unity-alternative

Quote:

We urgently need a new party of the left. Labour will not provide the opposition to coalition policies that the situation demands. We need to provide a genuine alternative to the austerity policies which the three main parties support. A party that is socialist, environmentalist, feminist and opposed to all forms of discrimination.Since we launched our appeal in March to discuss founding such a party, more than 9,000 people have signed up and more than 100 local groups have been established across the country. As Left Unity moves towards its founding conference on 30 November at the Royal National hotel in London, we call on all those who are sick of austerity and war, who want to defend the NHS and our public services, and want to see a fairer Britain, to join us.Gilbert Achcar, Jean Alain Roussel, Alan Gibbons, Zita Holbourne, Kate Hudson, Roger Lloyd Pack, Ken Loach, China Miéville, Michael Rosen

Come on, Stuart, what is this alternative to austerity under capitalism? What is this "fairer" capitalist Britain?

[Young Master Smeet]

Quote:

YMS: I've got nothing against you approaching the Socialist Platform if you want to. I was just drawing attention to the similarity between your own "means" and those you're wont to sneer at. It's no surprise to me that SPGBers would read the "Socialist Platform", note the similarity in words, and then turn up armed to the teeth with leaflets. It's just amusing to me that everyone's "means" and methods and actions are fair game for the most condescending sneering apart from your own, which is apparently a model of righteousness. Except, as I pointed out, they are in this case indistinguishable.

Well, our means are correct, and the right way of doing things, hence why we defend them.  It's entirely right for us to suggest that Socialist Platform types would be better off joining us rather than trying to yoke the reformist elements of UL to their platform.  I don't see what's opportunist (or deceitful or underhand) about a public open letter pointing that out: we're standing by our guns.  If anything, calling them out is a useful test to see if they will stand by theirs, or if they were engaged in submarine manoeuvres.

[Young Master Smeet]

jondwhite wrote:

I think you're using left in a sense of self-identified lefties who eschew revolution, strange in a topic about the Left Unity project. In the rhetorically "revolutionary" mileu, Occupy has done pretty well, in terms of breadth and depth of support, especially contrasted to non-"revolutionary" lefties, Labour etc.. Occupy Wall Street was also much better at this than Occupy London.

Well, Left Unity isn't a revolutionary organisation, is it?  The Spirit of 45 wasn't exactly revolutionary.

[alanjjohnstone]

It has been mentioned before but isn't Left Unity actually divisive. We have currently RESPECT, TUSC , the Green Party and as someone mentioned Scargill's SLP. Surely,  by going by their lack of success we can venture comparisons. In fact, there are those on the Left who continue to argue for involvement and to fight their corner within the Labour Party as the CP, the ILP and Militant once supported. Why re-invent the wheel? Why duplicate the effort?? Being sceptical is not the same as being cynical.  I have tried to follow the debates online but struggle when minutes use only initials and do  not mention any party affiliations. The platforms use full names but again neglects to include existing party membership details. The Communist Unity taks of 1919 involved political parties dissolving and merging into a new one. I don't think we will have that real unity arising with LU and so to look into my crystal ball, it will still continue to be divided by distinct factions vying for the soul and control of it. You don't need to be a soothsayer like Nostradamus to prophesise this. The differing positions on fundamentals exist now, and it is wishful thinking that a founding conference and the adoption of one particular platform will make those divisions disappear.   If you read back on this thread, i hoped that LU succeeds since we are in urgent need to resist the present capitalist offensive and engage more people in that resistance. I hope the trade unions can make their own contribution in this mobilisation. i hope against expectation , i am afraid. For you and Jools , the glass is half-filled, mine is half-empty.  Whatever the SPGB contribution may make, it  will be made openly in the name of the Party.

[Young Master Smeet]

I think Alistair Campbell can come to our rescue here. Apparently in government, he banged on about OST: Objective, Strategy, Tactics. For us, it runs like this:Objective: The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community.Strategy:That as the machinery of government, including the armed forces of the nation, exists only to conserve the monopoly by the capitalist class of the wealth taken from the workers, the working class must organize consciously and politically for the conquest of the powers of government, national and local, in order that this machinery, including these forces, may be converted from an instrument of oppression into the agent of emancipation and the overthrow of privilege, aristocratic and plutocratic.Tactics: Contest elections, hand out leaflets, sell the Standard. Now, Left unity flounders at the first stp, there is no common objective: socialism can mean anything from regulated markets, to Cuban style autarky, and all are included in left Unity.Even supposing an agreement on object, there is a wide disagreement on strategy, between the street protestors, the undoubted syndicalists and trotskyists and what nots who would object to any parliamentary route at all, and then the Left of Labour types who will be happy with electoral work.  Of course, we disagree fundamentally on the question of pursuing reforms (and then you will have to agree among yourselves what reforms to pursue).

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